Radio Silent

Our internet may not be set up for the next few days, so we might be flying below the radar for that reason. Probably a good thing for my study habits, not so good for the rabid internet addiction I’ve developed while in law school…

Celebrate!

I got the job!

Today is my last day of law school classes!

Tonight we move to Reston!

And, I just had an incredible egg and cheese bagel!

Sh!tstorm!

We THOUGHT we had coordinated …

our move-out date
with a truck rental date
with Matt taking vacation
with the date we take possession of our new place
with the date we pick up our new futon
with my hours at work
with applying for Georgetown (getting transcripts/letters of rec/app filled out/essay written)
with studying for 4 3-hour law school finals
with changing over our renter’s insurance*

BUT, after having one or more of these factors change multiple times by people who fail to inform us of such in a timely manner, thereby knocking down all the other dominoes in the sequence and necessitating either multiple pleading phone calls or frantic trips out to Reston or last-minute cancellation of shifts (which work most definitely frowns upon)

…we’re not so sure anymore.

*All of which is extremely reminiscent of the apply to law school/ finish Matt’s master’s degree/ plan a destination wedding/ apply for both our jobs/ move across the country festivities of the FIRST six months of this year. Are we gluttons for punishment, or what?!

Houston, We Have a Sublease.

If all goes well, we’re planning to move ON THURSDAY.

THIS THURSDAY.

We’ll keep you posted…

Thankful

To be back together again. To be sorting out the housing situation (more below). Perhaps most of all…that we don’t make a bad vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner!

To start off, I spent the first half of Thanksgiving like I’ve spend 90% of all holidays in the past eight years–in scrubs. Changing my career focus back to nursing–nurse-midwifery, no less–probably means that that isn’t going to change much anytime soon.

However, we had a sumptuous, Matt-and-Katie-style dinner when I got home. (Not that that’s any different from usual.) We had mushroom bread pudding, mashed potatoes (with the skins on, and plenty of sour cream and garlic), and pumpkin pie, along with steamed vegetables. It was absolutely amazing! It made us realize how much we had to be thankful for, realizing that there were so many people out there who were just eating plain turkey. 😉

To rewind a little, Matt got home safely Tuesday night about 11. I met him at the airport and we had a big juicy happy reunion, followed by late-night heaping helpings of Mexican casserole, which I’d made earlier in the day. He opened his birthday presents and I delightedly opened the pillow chocolates he’d brought home for me from his hotel. For his birthday, I’d made this cake, which I was actually honestly a little disappointed with. It seemed to be lacking both in the flavor and the moisture departments, which are two essential departments to me when we’re talking about cake. These brownies were so good that I wondered how this site could go wrong, but, well, it did. The only tweak I made was to use espresso instead of the water, and I can’t imagine that had a negative bearing. (It also didn’t seem to bear heavily on the flavor, to my disappointment.) The frosting (cocoa version) was another story–tangy, creamy, chocolatey goodness–but I’m not sure even it was able to save the cake. Matt claims he didn’t find anything wrong with it, but, well, he kind of has to claim that, right?

Wednesday, we spent the day basking in each other’s company, marveling at the fall colors, falling in love with Reston and the largest Indian food buffet in Northern Virginia…and…drum roll…picking out an apartment. About 2 miles from the hospital where I’d hopefully be working, and about a mile and a half from Matt’s work. It’s a spacious 1 bedroom that has a lot of the features that matter to us– a gas stove, tons of counter and cupboard space, and very pretty views of the woods outside. We’re getting almost twice the square footage for our money, and peace of mind to boot, which is worth a lot. As I got ready for work yesterday, I felt the old Midwesterner’s cold-weather urge to go out and start the car while I got ready for work, and then I had a good hard laugh about how quickly someone would steal the car as soon as I turned my back. But…in Reston…it’ll hopefully be a different story.

The other huge development of Wednesday was that we went to speak with the admissions department at the Georgetown School of Nursing about their midwifery program. It sounds better and better all the time. I feel like I really hit it off with the person there, and she made it sound like I might be able to slide into a class for spring semester if I were so inclined, even though the application deadline has passed. Since the job situation is up in the air, I’m going to go ahead and try to push it through. If the job in Reston doesn’t work it, it might be worthwhile to try to get a couple of classes done with. If it does, my inclination is to save on transportation and essentially just hole up in Reston for 8 months, then start full steam ahead in the fall. (If I get in.) We’ll see what happens.

But now, to the mad scramble that is law school finals, we’ve added packing and moving, applying to grad school, possibly starting grad school, and (hopefully!) changing jobs. Well, we certainly like a challenge around here.

*Special happy birthday shout-out to my mom!

Relief

Matt’s coming home tonight…I now have a job interview a week from tomorrow!…And I’m baking a cake (details to follow). Doesn’t get much better than this.

Change

Of career path (again). Of jobs (hopefully). Of apartments (perhaps imminently). Of whether to be fruitful and multiply (more distantly; and more on that at a later date).

It’s all adding up and the uncertainty is getting to me, a little.

Throw in that Matt’s been gone for a week and law school finals are approaching, and…OK, it’s getting to me kind of a lot.

I’m having renter’s remorse about having given notice to our landlady, who now seems twice as eager to be rid of us as we are to be out of here (who would have thought?). All of a sudden the proximity to the subway and the fact that we’re already here, coupled with the fact that I have heard nothing from the Reston hospital and thus so far have absolutely no obligation that awaits me there, are making me incredibly anxious that we’re making the wrong move. That I’m going to be marooned out where there is little public transportation and I’m going to have to spend long hours in traffic, every day, to a job that’s driving me up the wall.

I realize these aren’t the world’s most pressing concerns, but hey, this isn’t the world’s blog, either.

I’m worried that we’re making the same mistake again–succumbing to the charms of a place (in DC’s case, the culture and the experience of it; in Reston’s case, its beckoning walkability, among other things) while not yet recognizing that its drawbacks (for DC, the crime and the noise and the inconvenience; for Reston, the hours a day I may well end up spending in traffic) are what we really should have thought about. The things that will wind up affecting us on a daily basis.

I recognize that I have brought this on myself, but that doesn’t make all the uncertainty any easier to bear.

Holly’s Here!

And, despite the fact that she started the visit feeling under the weather (pediatric unit=germ pool), I know that I, at least, am having a wonderful time with her here. I hope she is too. I got an email from Matt the other day that told me to “have fun with your friends. Feed them well.” So far we’ve had mushroom risotto and made a pan of amazing brownies (swapping the nuts for chocolate chips since we both have funny feelings about texture like that) and just generally done lots of catching up. It’s been awhile since I’ve been around a nurse friend, and so we had lots of conversing (read: bitching) to do about that. She agrees with my assessment of the current hospital situation (with wide eyes: “Oh, honey, you need to get out of there!”) and is imminently supportive of the nurse-midwife idea. She is, in short, delightful company. I’ve missed her and now she’s here. So let the mad self-photography begin!

Other than that, yesterday I placed a weekend-long hold on an apartment in Reston. Not, unfortunately, one we’ve seen, but one whose location is very promising and whose price is more or less right (lower than what we’re paying now, but not low enough to be scary) and which we’ll see on Wednesday. I had an encouraging conversation with HR at the new hospital, in which I was told that I’m on their radar, that they were going to meet to discuss me on Wednesday but the nurse manager was called into an emergency. Is this a bad sign, because it means they’re understaffed? A good sign, because it means that a) they need my help and b) the NM is at least INVOLVED with what goes on on the floor? It’s too early to tell, but I’m getting to the point where I feel like anything else can’t be any WORSE than what I’m currently doing. I’m choosing to be optimistic and hope that it’s actually better. Wednesday I also have a meeting with the program director at Georgetown to discuss applying for the fall. So…it seems like things are, hopefully, starting to come together.

That’s really about it. Matt is still knocking ’em dead out in Salt Lake City, and I miss him terribly, but he’s wonderful about calling often, and I’m so proud of all his hard work.

But I’ll still be so glad to get him back.

The Loneliest Number

Well, we successfully launched Matt this morning, after waking up at the excruciating hour of THREE A.M. in order to get in a taxi at four, for a flight time of seven. He should hopefully be touching down in Salt Lake City just before noon Eastern Time (though he won’t, of course, be on Eastern Time). As a result, a cup of coffee and a few stray tears later, I’m at school a good hour and a half early, trying to use the extra time for something more productive than surfing the Internet and feeling a little sorry for myself.

You can see how well that’s going.

But, a quick update before I force myself to get down to business. Yesterday we went out to Reston and toured two apartments and picked up information for two others. They were all very nice, and all bigger AND less expensive than what we’re currently living in. The big question mark is whether I’ll be able to get a job out there, which is the thing that would most tip the scales in favor of moving out there. If we trade an hour-plus commute on Matt’s part for an hour-plus commute on my part (with the added consideration that my job starts at 7 to his 9), we may not have gained a whole lot. But, if we were both working there, it would simplify things considerably. So I’m hoping to hear from the hospital soon and we’ll take it from there. We did really enjoy walking around town (and marveled over the giant FREE parking garage in the Town Center), and gave into the impulse to go out for a farewell dinner.

Speaking of food (and when are we not?), here’s a stray recipe I meant to post last week. It’s vegetarian chili that’s sort of a culmination of the recipes that sounded best to me, combined with what we had in the house. We thought it turned out wonderfully, not to toot our own horns or anything.

Chili
2 cups water
28 oz crushed tomatoes
1 onion, diced
1 tsp minced garlic
1 stalk celery, chopped
3 tsp cumin
3 T chili powder
2 cans beans (I drained but didn’t rinse them. I used a can of kidney and one of navy, because that’s what we had, but you could use pinto or black or whatever)
2 cups of corn (I used frozen)

Combine everything but the corn. Simmer on medium heat for about an hour. Add the corn about 10-15 minutes before serving.

Cheap, easy, healthy good. It doesn’t get any better than that. Unless you top it with crackers, sour cream, chopped onions, and cheddar, like we did; and make it with this corn bread, which is, as the recipes says, VERY moist, and almost cakelike.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Today, alas, is both. Is that what’s getting me down? (In poor Karen Carpenter’s case, I think it’s more likely that hideous dress.) Or is it more frustration, stemming from the juggling of so many seeming irreconcilable factors (cost, proximity to Matt’s job/my job [which is on the rocks but what else is new]/where I might end up going to school, the absence of roaches and violent crime) as we try to find a new place to live? The idea that I’m not sure I can stomach eight more months at my current job? The uncertainty of not knowing whether I’ll get into the midwifery program I want? Or the thought that Matt’s going out of town in two days?

To be fair, I’m not even sure that “down” is the best way to describe how I’m feeling. It’s more like “blah.” It’s a feeling of being just plain tired of wrestling with the same ideas over and over again. Trying to find a place to live that meets our needs, trying to find a job that isn’t batshit crazy and a huge liability, literally; trying to get through the rest of the semester of law school without being literally bored to death. (Really, I fear this.) I realize these aren’t major problems, they don’t even really demand a solution, except for “wait and see,” but that doesn’t stop me from wishing that we’d get a break in the case, a change, a clue, something to refresh this weary sluggishness.

To be even more fair, a lot of things have swung our way lately. Confronted by Matt, who has been pushed to his limits by the bugs et al, our landlord has agreed to let us out of our lease, with 60 days’ notice. The hospital in the town where Matt works appears to have a number of openings in labor and delivery; there are even some affordable apartments nearby. While the idea of living in an internationally known planned community from the 1960’s feels maybe a little Stepford at first, on the other hand, there’s something about it that seems kind of utopian and right for people who save their vegetable scraps along with their old underwear. (And what, the idea of me as fawning and submissive and impossibly beautiful doesn’t sound realistic to you?) The town’s objectives, having to do with leisure and walkability and the premise of (*gasp*) living in the same town where you work, sound like we could have concocted them ourselves as an antidote to what we’ve found are the MAJOR downsides of living in the city.

As far as school goes, maybe I’ll get in and maybe I won’t. It’s the chance you take when you move across the country to do something and then change your mind about it. It seems unrealistically fortuitous that there would even be such a program in the same town where I moved to go to law school, but there is. Not everybody’s husband would have the same kind of loving patience for this sort of flip-floppery that mine does. As for said husband’s being gone for a week, it’s going to be rough, as anyone who’s ever witnessed our separation can attest… but I’m lucky that I’ll have good friends there with me the whole time, so that at least I don’t have to worry about being alone.

That just leaves finishing law school: 17 days until the end of classes…11 days of actual school, plus 12 hours of final exams…but who’s counting?